Recently, in the commercial printing industry, a POD market has been emerging in which a relatively small-lot printed matter called POD (Printed On Demand) is delivered to a customer in a short lead time. In the POD market, orders are often received from multiple customers. As a result, in the POD market, printing conditions of printed outputs and printed matter for which a manuscript thereof is submitted to a printing vendor are often diverse. In order to make a profit under such diverse printing conditions, it is necessary to improve operational efficiency.
A first measure which leads to the improved operational efficiency may be a reduction of downtime in a printing process. An example of the downtime includes the following. According to a request of a customer, a printing vendor carries out a pre-press operation and a printing process. However, when various conditions actually set in a printer apparatus do not match a printing condition designated by the pre-press operation, a submission of a printing job causes an error, making it not possible to conduct printing. In this case, the printing vendor may change either one of printing conditions designated by the pre-press operation and conditions set in the printer apparatus and cause both to match, releasing the error condition and performing a printing process.
In this way, when the error occurs, the printing process is stopped unless either of the printing conditions designated by the pre-press operation and the conditions set in the printer is changed, causing a downtime to occur where printing is actually made. In addition, the downtime becomes longer the lower the level of recognition of the error occurrence by an operator.
As a specific example of a case in which the downtime occurs, when a customer requests an A4 size printed material, an operator designates the A4 size printed material, the operator designates the A4 size printing material in the pre-press operation, and a size of a sheet mounted in the printer apparatus is an A3 size, for example, the sheet sizes do not match, causing the printing process to be stopped.
Moreover, when there is one operator and where the pre-press operation is actually performed and an installed location of the printer apparatus are distant, the operator fails to know in advance that the sheet sizes do not match and comes to know for the first time that the sheet sizes do not match only after he is notified of an error, so that the downtime becomes even longer.
In the above case, while it is common to change the size of the sheet mounted in the printing apparatus from the A3 size to the A4 size and match the sheet sizes to cause the processing process to resume, a moving time increases when the installed location of the printer apparatus and where the pre-press operation is actually performed are distant, causing some time in the sheet replacement operation of the printer apparatus. Moreover, when there is no A4 size sheet to be replaced with where the printing is actually performed, the printing process cannot be carried out unless the A4 size sheet is ordered.
In the above-described case, two pages of A4 size printing data desired by the customer are printed on an A3 size sheet, after which they are cut at a central portion of the A3 size sheet, making it possible to generate an A4 size printed sheet.
With an aim at the printing process, in the above case, printing data corresponding to two A4 size pages are arranged in a 2Up layout on one A3 size sheet, a setting is made for printing onto the A3 size sheet, and a further setting for cutting at a central portion of the printed sheet is performed to generate a printing job for transmitting to the printer apparatus.
Moreover, the above case represents a status such that the A3 size sheet is mounted in the printing apparatus, so that a printing process may be performed without an error occurrence as the sheet sizes match even when a printing job is received in which a setting is made for printing onto the A3 size sheet.
In the above case, printing may be made onto the A3 size paper, after which cutting may be made at a central portion of the sheet by a cutting machine connected to the printer apparatus, and printed matter corresponding to two A4 size sheets may be generated. Thereafter, it suffices for the operator to overlap the printed matter corresponding to the two A4 size sheets in an intended order. With such a continuous operation, an A4 size printed matter requested by the customer is generated without an occurrence of downtime.
In the above case, while a single-face printing of two A4 size pages is described as an example, the above-described printing process may be performed also in a double-face printing, taking into account pages to be laid out on the front and the back of the sheet.
For printing on an A3 size sheet that results in multiple pages, in performing the above-described printing process, it is operationally most efficient when all of the pages are printed onto the A3 size sheets, after which all of the A3 size sheets are cut at once at the central portion thereof, and the cut A4 size printed sheets are collectively overlapped. However, in the above-described case, it is necessary to take into account a page arrangement of the A4 size printing data to be laid out onto the A3 size sheet.
When the first page and the second page are merely laid out onto the A3 size sheet, it may happen that the printed matter is not eventually generated in an expected order of pages when overlapping of the cut printed sheets are collectively performed for all of the pages. Thus, it is necessary to lay out onto an A3 size sheet, taking into account the page order after the printed sheets are overlapped.
A printing method called multi-face printing exists in which multiple sheets of different manuscripts are paginated on the same sheet for printing, and it is already known to paginate such that different manuscripts are paginated on the same sheet for printing, after which cutting is made with a cutting machine, and then are overlapped, so that the manuscripts are ordered in an aligned manner (see Patent document 1, for example.)